Across the country the epidemic of police brutality continues to intensify. From Los Angeles, where the L.A.P.D. is engulfed in the largest police scandal in U.S. history, to New York where the courts allowed the cops who gunned down Amadou Diallo in a hail of 41 bullets to walk free and a wave of police killings followed close on the heels of this shameful verdict. Police and other law enforcement agents continue to brutalize and murder people at alarming rates and are still almost never punished by the courts. Meanwhile on the southern border, I.N.S. agents and sheriffs work handinglove with vigilantes who are openly organizing the hunting and lynching of immigrants. All too often, politicians cover up this official brutalityor even applaud and encourage it.

The authorities have subjected a whole generation of our youth to a cycle of criminalization which includes: harassment for the color of their skin, the way theyre dressed or having too much attitude; antigang laws that make it illegal to have a beeper or even just hang out; warehousing them in prison; and legally lynching them on death row. Many of our communities have been turned into killing fields. We must transform them into arenas of resistance as we join together to throw these vicious attacks back in their faces!